NHL on Versus One More Year?

The current deal between the NHL and Versus expires at the end of this season. There’s been no announcement or story in any State-side paper yet, but the Globe and Mail has this note at the end of a story about the NHL extending agreements with CBC and TSN:

Versus, the U.S. cable channel, has extended its deal with the NHL through 2007-08. The Versus audiences are growing, up to about 195,000 a game, but far short of ESPN’s 416,000 average in 2003-04.

This is just after a lot of media attention about how the NHL All-Star game was hard to find (ironic that the story itself let people know about it and where it is).

If true, one big trigger that’ll come from this one-year extension: Comcast, owner of Versus, will now help distribute the NHL Network in the US. They have until July to do so. That could have played a large part in the NHL’s decision to renew.

If the NHL could forge a deal with ESPN/ESPN2 and VS and have 3-4 games broadcast a week on national cable, it’d be the ideal solution for the league. While the money probably wouldn’t be as good with Disney & co., it would provide much needed exposure, plus it would also allow the NHL to advertise on ESPN, something they cannot do now because the network does not allow advertising for sports that they don’t broadcast.

Update 520pm: Just a random thought. If the NHL were to ever be broadcast games on the ESPN networks again, I do hope the network can come up with some creative like this about NASCAR coming back to ESPN. I don’t really watch NASCAR, I’ve never been to an event, but I still like the spot and can just relate to it as a sports fan. Well done.

Comments

I think the NHL knew post lockout there would be a signifigant drop in viewers but the league has made up for it somewhat with increased attendance. Just today the NHL announced an attendance record for January. I always watch games on FSN pittsburgh. I think Pittsburgh has been on Versus and NBC maybe 3 times this year.
I think ESPN2 may be a fitting venue for hockey games with selected ones going on the big network. I hope TW does get NHL network, kind of a bummer not catching their programming. It's gonna be interesting to watch how things develop in the offseason into the 07-08 season with what the league decides to do for TV networks.Posted by Kris Karkoski on 2007-02-02 23:50:31

But going off of just distribution size alone seems like a pretty shoddy prerequisite, don't you think? Wouldn't it have been in the NHL's favor to instead require a certain gain in audience size, percentage-wise? A hard number of viewers would have been unfair, I'll admit that ... but a percentage gain requirement would have seemed fair enough, and more in favor of the league. *Shrugs.*
Is there any sort of information on whether or not the contract with Versus stipulates that the league not broadcast games on any other channels outside of themselves and NBC? And if that is the case, could the NHL get that clause dropped if they tried?
All this stuff gives me a headache even trying to understand it, so forgive me if my attempt at contract babble makes no sense.Posted by Michael Turner on 2007-01-26 12:24:54

I believe that the option for extension was on Versus' part because they had achieved a certain level of distribution.Posted by Mike Chen on 2007-01-26 04:27:03